Not all arthouse thrillers are destined to be ruined by Hollywood remakes; Alejandro Amenabar's Open Your Eyes and George Sluizer's The Vanishing may have flopped in their new versions, but Erik Skjoldbjaerg's Insomnia triumphantly resurfaced in the version by Christopher Nolan. As for this remake of the cult Japanese horror film Ring, well, it's disappointing, losing most of the original's flavour, while retaining and amplifying what was muddled and unsatisfying about it in the first place.

The Ring is about a sinister occult video showing a series of strange and uncanny images that kills anyone who watches it. It is a brilliant premise, stretching back to MR James's Casting the Runes, and more recently given new life in Chuck Palahniuk's novel Lullaby. But at least part of the tension and the sheer hold this storyline exerts consists in wondering - how exactly did this terrifying video come to be made? And on this point, here as in the original Japanese movie, there is ultimately nothing but bafflement and exasperation.

The shocks this film delivers are on the money, mostly, but the narrative apparatus built up around them is rickety and often utterly nonsensical. Naomi Watts is Rachel, the tough investigative reporter who sees the video and has therefore seven days to live; like all journalists in the movies she seems to have no work to do other than trade abusive banter with her bald boss. Rachel has a son much given to making scarily insightful drawings, communing with lost souls, demonstrating his access to emotional truths hidden from the screwed-up adults and, of course, speaking in a teeny, tiny little voice. No prizes for guessing what video he's been watching.